LAUSR

Possible mechanism of oxidative carbonylation of methanol via >Cu(OCH3)2Cu< binuclear cationic oxo-clusters in the CuNaX zeolite with Cu2+ cations is analyzed theoretically within the scope of periodic boundary conditions with VASP. Such scheme was first derived by Saegusa et al. (J. Org. Chem.1970, 35, 2976) and was never tested by theoretical modeling to our best knowledge. For the CO attack we have computed the activation energy value that is close to experimental values obtained in Cu-zeolites. We suppose that this scheme can correctly describe the oxidative carbonylation at medium and high Cu loading when the copper oxo-clusters can be formed.